I can relate to this - most of my campaigns end when I have reached the outskirts of Meduna. Some sort of randomized placement of enemys/tanks/mines around and within Meduna would definitely increase the replayablility.

The game can get kinda tedious because although you have new maps, the principle of the battles always stays kinda the same:
Kill the bad guys, win the battle/sector.
Scripting could be a solution, to make sure some events during combat make that specific battle different from others.
Less battles would also be a solution. Or a smaller gameworld. Or making the endgame battles really different. Dunno how though.
Maybe by building the game up more in mission style, so that you have to do something special to get into Meduna,
or getting captured so you have to escape the facility and stuff like that.
Bassically anything that makes an endgame fight totally different from a mid-game one.

I think the problem the game gets boring near the end is that you have too much money and your mercs have become too good, in other words the game has become too easy and most importantly there are no more (real) goals you can achieve (improving your merc, getting a stable cash flow, ...)

The problem is indeed routine. By mid-game you've got your teams together, you have got the weapons you needed, now all there is left is endless micromanagement (replace lost militia, keep your mercs equipped) and of course battles. And I have to admit that battles in JA are very repetitive: Big initial enemy rush, followed by a *long* search for those last hiding enemies, that's all. Battles get tedious. They lack the excitement of the beginning, and they are much too much alike. The only thing which keeps me going is - sightseeing! Yeah, the scenery in UC is outstanding. Makes me want to visit every single sector...

IMHO that could only be changed by enhancing the enemy AI (see that thread, in that forum), so battles would be unique (or at least require more than one player neurone to be fought).

Actually, I think variety in objectives would make a huge difference. For example, all current objectives are as follows: kill the enemy, clear the sector, repeat. Kill, kill, kill. It gets tedious.

If the objectives were 1) find the power dam in the river above (x city), 2) blow the power generators without destroying the dam and flooding the city, 3) use the resulting blackout to raid the main armory outside of town, liberate weapons and destroy remaining stockpiles, and 4) using the newly acquired resources, raid (x city) and break (informant) out of jail so that informant can assist us with locating (arms dealer) - or something like that - the game would be MUCH more interesting. It is the sheer lack of strategic options which makes the combat into a chore. Endless well-equipped enemies, nagging supply problems, micromanaging increasingly more difficult combats, all interfere with enjoyment. The kicker is, at present, there's no way to change those problems. There is no strategic solution such as cutting enemy supply routes or diverting enemy reinforcements to another sector. If the White Hats can figure out a way to make strategy effective in-game, they will have accomplished a major step toward making this the perfect game.

Airstrikes. Enable the airstrikes in the game. I never understood SirTech's reasonings to remove this feature from the game. In the early stages the Queen won't use her "reletevly small airforce" (as stated in the CIS report) on a bunch guns-for-hire too much, but as the game progresses control of the SAM sites will be imperative for victory, as well as control of the last airstrip in Meduna.

And / Or

Put tanks into attacking forces. By the late stages of the game a militia will find itself defending against tanks. This will make holding parts of Meduna more intresting.

- Tanks, indeed. Make a whole enemy tank bataillon rove the countryside - So the player has to play hide & seek untill he has got the necessary hardware to make some hit & run attacks.

- Yes, cause-effect strategic missions like KIA suggests. Another exemple would be having enemy supply convois you can ambush (if you know where and when), and which will lower enemy readyness in some isolated garrisons (and equip your forces!).

- Airstrikes, why not, but I'd rather see helicopter (gunship) strikes, since you usually don't start carpetbombing your countryside just because of a couple of pistol- and shotgun-armed mercs.

- Orders. It's usually when you're about to crush the enemy that you get the order to stop everything, or to concentrate on another point, giving the enemy time to regroup and gather forces.

- Armed factions which can help, but also change side (think Afghanistan). You can't trust them too much, but you desperately need them (like, they have tanks/aircraft). Their loyalty is dependent on lots of money, weapon deliveries and helping them in their very own war against other factions. If you anger them, they won't hesitate to switch sides.

- Add civilian management (think Irak). That means riots, hostile civilians who could be undercover soldiers but you can't just shoot without proof. In the same spirit:

- Suicide bombers (same). You'd have to add a means to issue orders to civilians and to search them.

Out of these solutions I have to say I like KIAs the best. The multi layered misions he described are not only more realistic, but would also greatly enhance replayability with the variety of setbacks that could occur if any part of these actions goes wrong. Apart from that, they offer a flood of new story line potential without gimmickry.
Also showing much promise are the suggestions of Kurt. I particularly like the armed factions and weather ideas, these show real challenge and future replayability.
Wodan's ideas about more variety in scripting also offers a lot of diversity and thus replayability. He also hinted at the end game complex mission so eloquently described by KIA.
This thread is a good idea and I sincerely hope some of the ideas here are incorporated.

hiho
for me , there are two reasons why the endgame becomes boring.
1.''gizmo - factor'' all items/weapons are availiable ...the thrill of getting the hands on the ''insert ur prefered weapon here'' is gone.
2.game balance is broken
mercs get interupts most of the times and the loss of the advantage of better weapons weakens the weak AI even more

You know, that last bit is really good. How insane can you be to just wait around for your killers when your ENTIRE ARMY couldn't stop them? Add a "harbor" sector to Meduna that is unreachable unless you go through the city, or that you have to secure the airspace so you could make a helicopter insertion. Once you're on the outskirts of Meduna its a race against time to take the city and kill the queen before she escapes. 24 hours should be right. Ofcorse you'll get a heads-up from Enrico about this via E-mail.

Adding some strategic elements would help also.
For example, when you conquer Estoni, the frequence of attacks on Cambria, Grumm and Chitzena should be reduced because you control the road that lead to these towns.

There is also one thing we can all do in order not to get bored: play in Iron man, which means that your can lose your whole highly-effective squad in a battle near Meduna against very tough ennemies. You then have to hire new mercs to finish the job.

Remember the interrogation scene when you get captured by Deidranna's troops?

Deidranna at some point asks for the location of the rest of your mercenaries. I think it would be a neat addition to have the Queen use airstrikes on that location. You would have to move your mercs away quickly to avoid heavy casualties. :professor:

Originally posted by Tyco: Like I mentioned elsewhere, the population of Arulco is not that of Iraq and Afghanistan.

True indeed, but it's kind of irrelevant. JA was situated in Metavira, and JA2:UB in Tracona. Arulco is just one of the settings, the future JA could very well take place somewhere else.

Of course I don't plead the making of "JA in Iraq" or something ridiculous like that; But a country which justifies the use of mercenaries could very well be situated in some fictive Middle Eastern (or South Asian) country, where you find lots of ethnic and religious tensions.
After all what's the interest of a swiss setting (heavy fines for dropping empty bullet cases on the well-groomed lawn)...

I definately agree that MERC's get too good too soon, but this can be eaily changed I guess. I haven't looked at that part of the source code, but if you halve the experience points you earn, you can slow the progression down.

Also, if I occupied a town and I knew that a gang of merc's was out to get the mine, I would set up machine gun nests or barricade myself in some way. I just watched the third Band of Brothers episode on TV last night where they took Carentan and those German buggers were hiding on second floors, behind walls, sniping and had machine guns covering all routes into the town.
In JA the soldiers will run right at you, running over open fields to get you. For some reason they will always be on the offense while defending something is way easier and safer than attacking.

Again, I refer to KIAs suggetstion as offering a lot of solution here but the point about slowing down the character evolution (stats increase) is something I'd very much like to see as an option.
Even better yet would be stat development influenced by various character classes such as Sniper, Guerilla, etc. Certain stats would advance quicker than others depending on the mercs specific vocation. I know, this is perhaps way too ambitious but we can dream, eh?

I agree that clearly defined objectives would make the game more interesting.
However, I played Jagged Alliance 1 several times. I never stopped a game before the last sector was conquered and [insert the name of the evil guy, I forgot his name] was dead. In JA1, I had perfectly equiped mercs as well. So I wonder whether the problem actually is located in the lack of "strategic options" or somewhere else.

I'm sure the problem is this repetitive fight-search the sector, fight-search the sector etc...Once you have taken a city, well, you just have to walk to another one and conquer it. There is something lacking on the strategic side it's obvious.

JA1, as far as I remember (memory isn't what it used to be ) had much more varied tactical maps. I remember having to swim quite often, a thing I never did in JA2 and JA2:UB.

About the availability of guns and stuff - I don't think there should be any restricted or "rare" weapons; In RL it's quite easy to get almost anything (especially in some countries), and those are a mercenary's tools of trade, so I really can't imagine mercenaries not knowing where & how to equip themselves.

I absolutely agree to what you said about the variety of the tactical maps. I'd add as well that trees made an impassable barrier. Combined with water on the maps in JA1 there often where small places one had to get to to see and fight the enemy (those nasty "swamp & river"-maps).

I do not agree about the availability of guns and equipment in general:

1. If you take RL as a measure dead enemies always had to drop stuff - at least a gun and amo. That would lead to imbalances - and the ultimative task of item-management - very quickly. Personally I find it more interesting to be forced to choose what items to pick up and what items to let go (correct English?).
2. Whether "mercenaries know where & how to equip themselves" or not totally depends on the scenario. As we have seen in Metavira weapon-shops are not common all over the world, especially not on islands that were invaded by "evil men"

IMHO the enemies near the endgame should be as tough as eating a three day old steak with a spoon.
The AI isn't going to change once you get this far but the enemies controlled by it should. There could be the regular redshirts, that are pumped up a bit from their counterparts in the countryside, and then the Uber Elites, that will hunt you down with all the skills and experience across the board that a level 8 or higher nemesis should have. The settings are too low on the soldiers in these latter stages of the game.

Surprises are my specialty. Mines, booby traps, and bad guys hiding around corners and behind doors is a great element to keep the player in suspense. It doeasn't hurt to drop spoilers by means of emails and other information about the upcoming goodies to be had.

you should send an email like 'huge undefended arms cache at x.xx sector, only to set the player up to find the arms cache being used by entrenched elites! (of course, you'd have to give them a few real tip offs to set them up for the big one)

As far as the number of items found in each sector. I don't think I'd change drops.

But, I would take out nearly all of the boxes, lockers, etc...

Each sector should have maybe one or 2 areas at the most that need to searched. Heavily guarded, booby-trapped and hard to open. With chances of finding cash, weapons and maybe quest items of some type.

It seems a waste of time to have a sector with 50+ lockers or boxes to open and 95% are empty.

Sounds nice and easy, maby, all the items found, can be grayed out, so can't take them, and have to get them yourself. But you'll know what is in the sector. Thust an idear, don't know if it's any good...

Yes please... I don't have as much time to play as I used to. I think a perfect size would be 4-5 cities, in a game world that's about half as big.

Do you remember the original "Master of Orion" game ... you got to specify gameworld size as a toggle-able option at the beginning of each game. It would be great if there were something like this for JA2. Small (3 cities), Medium (5 cities), Large (the whole map). Then someone like me could play a campaign in two evenings, and people who want to play the whole thing can also do that.

I have played JA2 over 10 times... maybe 15 times total? That's a LOT of time to fight your way past the tanks, storm the gates of Meduna, capture and defend the Gardens, etc etc. I don't even mind the fighting so much -- I love the combat of JA2 -- but unlocking doors, managing sector inventory, doing mine sweeps, etc just kills it for me.

I'm keeping my copy of JA2, obviously, but I really don't want to start another campaign at this point in life.

I fear a modular gameworld would be difficult to implement, since there is a storyline to respect (some key places would have to stay there anyway).

BTW, I understand what you feel; I don't have as much time either. Fortunately I don't mind playing a game for months, even years, a little bit at a time.

The thing which IMHO makes JA tedious is micromanagement. Sometimes you enjoy spending half an hour RT (re)equiping your mercs, but most of the time you just don't want to spend that time doing something you're alredy doing for a living in your everyday job. An option to automate some tasks at will would be welcome.

A skirmish mode would indeed be interesting. You could toggle a bunch of things like whether all your enemies were Bloodcats or Tanks. Toggle availability of Weapons. Toggle map size, ect.
The only thing that could add more re-playability would be Multiplayer...

I always found that the division of time into units on the strategic level was pretty motivating (I always tried to conquer three sectors per day, and to make it back before sunset). Sometimes speed on the strategic level was a must to reach certain goals, like rescueing Brenda or enter the sectors listed in the decrypted codes.

The division of time in rounds on the strategic level totally disappeared in JA2 since both fighting in day- and nighttime was possible. Though I like to be independend on the daytime I still miss this element.